e of cholera
have fallen from 3558--the average number at the time the new system
was introduced--to 1195. Recently a leak in the dam, which necessitated
temporary resumption of the use of the Mariquina River water, was
immediately followed by a marked increase in the number of deaths
from such diseases, thus conclusively demonstrating the fact that we
were right in ascribing the previous reduction in deaths to a better
water supply.

This annual saving of lives is an important result, but more important
yet is the fact that when Asiatic cholera reappears in the Mariquina
valley, as it inevitably will sooner or later, we shall not live in
constant fear of a general infection of the Manila water supply,
which, judging from the experience of other cities where modern
sanitary methods have been introduced, might result in the death of
a third of the population. In every country a very considerable part
of the population always fails to boil its drinking water, no matter
how great the resulting danger may be.

Manila lacked any facilities for the proper disposal of human waste,
and the conditions which resulted were unspeakable, especially in
the little _barrios_, or groups of houses, placed close together,
helter-skelter, on wet, swampy ground and reached by means of runways
not worthy even of the name of alleys, as one often had to crouch to
pass along them.

A modern sewer system costing $2,000,000, supplemented by a pail
system, has very effectively solved this problem, while thousands of
homes closely crowded on disease-infected, mosquito-breeding ground
have been removed to high, dry, sanitary sites. The regions thus
vacated have in many instances been drained, filled, provided with
city water and good streets, and made fit for human occupancy.

The old moat around the city walls was a veritable incubator of
disease. It has been converted into an athletic field where crowds
of people take healthful exercise. The _esteros_, or tidal creeks,
reeked with filth. More than twenty miles of such creeks have been
cleaned out, although much still remains to be done to put them in
really satisfactory condition.

There were no regulations covering the construction of buildings, and
it was not unusual to find six or eight persons sleeping in a closed
and unventilated room 10 x 8 x 8 feet. Manila now has an excellent
sanitary code, and such conditions have been made unlawful.

The previous woeful lack of hospital facilitie